Excerpt from Real Stories From Baltimore County History In its report to the National Education Association the Committee of Eight on the Study of History in the Elementary Schools, appointed by the American Historical Society, said: "Our history teaching in the past has tailed largely because it has not been picturesque enough." If this criticism were justified by the colorless history teaching observed in the presentation of material throughout the grades, doubtless the same truth applies to the teaching of local history, for all too often that which is near and immediate, by virtue of its nearness, loses its romantic quality and becomes prosaic and commonplace fact. It is true that distance does lend a kind of enchantment as well as dignity to what may have been, once upon a time, a commonplace event, but any significant character or event takes on new meaning, may even have a quality of picturesqueness, if placed in its right perspective. Therefore it behooves us to choose such material from out the past experiences of the communities as will interpret the present, and to manifest such skill in method of presentation that local history teaching may not fail "because it is not picturesque enough." The history of any community is the history of the common man, and as there is a constant struggle in adjustment to environment, history is ever in the process of making, is not static, but ever in a fluid state, progressing, changing as time goes on. The aim of local history teaching may then said to be "to make the children more intelligent with respect to the more crucial activities, conditions and problems of present-day life," by selecting those typical activities which serve this purpose. Certain interesting elements indicative of changes constantly taking place appear in the study of every community in which the people should have wholesome pride. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.